This month marked the beginning of my full-time focus on Melville Jacoby. June marked my latest birthday. May marked three years since I received my master's degree. In many ways I haven't lived a normal life since.

I'm 32. My last "normal" job ended four years ago, and only three years since I started my first full-time position in my chosen profession. Let that sink in. Less than 10 percent of my time on this Earth has been spent in a professional workplace. The vast majority of my life has been spent not working on my career, not plugging away in an office day-in and day-out, not doing what I thought "it" was all leading toward. Life so far has seemed more about creating and recreating myself. It has been about making something of myself rather than actually being something.

And here I am trying to write a book about someone else, trying to tell someone else's story. The something I am making of myself depends on the something Melville Jacoby made of himself, and of the something of his that was denied.

And it was denied when Mel was just 25. That's the same age I was when I got that first "real" job. By that time Mel had made friends around the world. He'd dodged bullets. He'd made daring escapes. He'd met and impressed some of history's most prominent figures. He'd completed his education and made his way into a fantastic job. He'd been a heartthrob, he'd loved and lost, and, finally, he'd married an astounding woman.

Mel's life was short, but full. When I compare it with mine, it's difficult not to feel something missing. I wonder if that sense of disappointment is of my own making or a product of this era.